Learn to Snuba

You’ve seen the pho­to­graphs and films of col­or­ful reef fish un­du­lat­ing in the warm, deep-blue ocean cur­rents, and now you want to ex­pe­ri­ence the sen­sa­tion of me­an­der­ing along­side them. But div­ing with heavy tanks seems a bit much, and snor­kel­ing only scratches the sur­face.

There is a com­pro­mise. Snuba, in­vented in 1988, is a dive ex­pe­ri­ence that com­bines the best of both scuba and snor­kel­ing. It al­lows par­tic­i­pants to go deeper than snor­kel­ing by us­ing a shal­low-wa­ter dive sys­tem that makes it pos­si­ble to dive as deep as 20 feet be­low the sur­face for up to 30 min­utes with­out wear­ing heavy air tanks. Divers wear masks, fins and weight belts. What sets snuba apart is the mouth­piece (or reg­u­la­tor) at­tached to a hose that ex­tends to the sur­face, where air tanks float in a raft.

Chil­dren as young as 8 years old can snuba, as long as they are com­fort­able in the wa­ter.